Yesterday evening I had a chance to go and play some music with my friends in Warren and I also needed to get gas in my 1993 red and silver Buick Skylark, so I loaded up my kids and gear and hit the road to PA.
It was a fun trip with my shuffle playing, the sun shining and it was an all around beautiful day. As I bonus, I had a $15.00 gas card that I had earned from Quality Markets for buying my groceries there.
It's honestly been a long time since I've filled up my gas tank to the brim, but since I had the benefit of PA's thirty cents less a gallon and my gift card, I filled my gas tank with 13 and 1/2 gallons of liquid mobility.
I cruised over to my mother-in-laws house to drop off the kids and say hello to the family before my rehearsal for a bit. A few minutes later, my husband pulled up behind my car in the driveway to meet us for dinner at Mom's place.
He said his hellos and gently took me aside and said, " Tara, I think you need to come outside and take a look at your car."
There are those words that I totally despise. It's code for, " Tara, your car needs you to dump some $ into it."
As I stepped onto the driveway my eyes were met with a glorious display of red, blue, purple and yellow swirls of gasoline rapidly dripping from the just filled gas tank of my Buick. A rainbow fuel trail had traveled about 8 feet past the back of my car, down the incline and was almost reaching the front of our Toyota - parked directly behind it.
There was so much gas on the ground that my husband put the Toyota in neutral and let it roll a safe distance away from my car. He handed me the AAA card and I called my mechanic. My mechanic, Ron, told me to move it to a level surface, so I did. The dripping slowed and almost stopped once the car was on a level surface. I still thought that I'd have to get a tow back to J-town, but I was advised that the car would loose less gas being driven than if it was propped up on a tow for 20 miles. Drip, drip, drip...
I took my chances and drove the car to my mechanic's shop on the North side of Jamestown, all the time imagining all those 1980's movies that had cars blowing up as the driver turns the ignition. Tick, tick, tick, tick, BOOM!
I'm happy to say I arrived safe and sound at the shop. (30 minutes and several prayers later) I dropped off my keys and I'll hear later on about the $ I'll need to dump into it to have it repaired.
So much for driving 20 miles to buy cheaper gas to loose it dripping away down a driveway five minutes after you bought it. What's the old saying, easy come - easy go? I'm just glad this "go" didn't end in a BOOM!
UPDATE -
The car is already fixed and it was not the tank, but the line that led to the tank was rusted out. :) Yeah I will have my car back again!
Comments